On this Honda Civic there is
- No need to turn the car-key to the third position to start the car.
- No 3rd turn position for the car key.
- A big red start button to turn the engine.
My holiday started with a big red button!
The very nice chap at the car rental place spent several minutes explaining the controls to me. Many controls are consistent with those on other cars. Some are not.
OooooOOOOOoOOoOH (signifiying that finding and applying unusual controls can make driving difficult or impossible).
I like the silver go-faster button on the steering wheel. If only I could remember what to press to make the go faster button work. The chap at the car rental place showed me how to phone him incase I had any trouble at all. Given the non-standard controls, and the nice chap, I suspect they get quite a few phone-calls from baffled renters and girls like me who fancy talking to the nice chap again… ….where is that number….
In the US car ownership is established with a Title. When you sell your car you transfer the title to the new owner. Loosea’s title has gone AWOL. I looked everywhere, honest. Luckily a swift check online produced a form for declaring her title lost and releasing it to a new owner. My signature on the slightly confusing form had to be notarised. The Notary had to ask for a second opinion about what should be filled-in. All turned out well in the end. Hoorah, despite my relocation induced scattiness Loosea will get to go to a new home, across the road, the house opposite, she’s a bit of a home-body
forty-seventh post in a Wednesday series highlighting some of the pollutants that promote Wendy’s singleness.
Reason # 47: emissions tested
Wendys can produce unfiltered, untested balderdash. In Washington State gas emissions are subject to production constraints and testing, but alas, not Wendy’s balderbash. Boys ill-equipt with their own balderdash filtering mechnaism are unlikely to survive pre-dating balderbash emissions.
When trying-out a new Tea venue I normally take a quick look at the place name and memorize it’s location as a road junction then swing on out there in LooSea. This strategy has served me well, until today. Two tea places in the same building, is Seattle. Hardly what a girl is expecting. I’d arranged to meet Jenn at one of them. Remedy teas.
I went into the wrong one. The Teapot. After two pots of excellent Orange Spice tea, without milk or company, I left. I stopped to take a photograph of the building on the way out. That’s when I noticed my mistake, can you see it? Teapot on the left, Remedy Tea on the right. I meekly wandered over to “Remedy teas”.
Jenn in black and the torture victim were sitting outside. In January, outside, a week after snow-fall, without coats. Washington State locals are really rufty-tufty. Jenn’s ‘Loser’ handbag was definitely pointing at me under the table. How did she know in advance? They were very forgiving about my missing the place first time and let me join them for another pot of Tea and a waitress interview.
After three pots of tea I only used the ‘restrooms’ once, my bladder is under tight control. The restrooms also helped me with a poster describing the six-stages of ’how to wash your hands’ with pictures. Now I know. Good job I’ve got that little skill sorted now. It should prevent all sorts of unplanned nastiness.
Do not try this at home
Loosea’s boot (US trunk) has a magnetic quality for the SUV’s that follow her. To reduce the effect I normally regularly pull into parking places allowing the aggressive SUVs to progress to sniffing the boot of the car in front of Loosea. Pulling into a parking place is not always a realistic option on windy mountain roads. While sight-seeing on the Olympic peninsula I serendipitously discovered a way to abrogate this SUV courting activity. A simple and cunning manoeuvre that I have christened flaccid drifting.
Steps to perform a flaccid drift:
- drive so that the passenger-side of the car slowly crosses onto the hard shoulder.
- slowly correct your alignment.
- if there is plenty of oncoming traffic repeat steps 1 through 2 above.
- if there is no oncoming traffic, no opportunity for the car behind to overtake and no passing place within sight take steps 5 and 6.
- drive so that the driver-side of the car crosses the centre of the road.
- slowly correct your alignment.
Note: in many US wide lanes, with a small car, it is possible to perform the flaccid drift without ever leaving the lane. This is a preferable, safer, operation.
This manoeuvre increases the distance between Loosea’s boot and the following SUV by approximately 8 fold. Repeating the 6 steps is not necessary. Once the extra distance between Loosea’s boot and the SUV is established, it is reasonably well maintained. Excellent result.
Dr. Wendy does not recommend using this highly dangerous manoeuvre.
Lakeside Collision: Not recommended. Extremely poor customer service strategy. 
:-(
Due to a slight disagreement with a concrete column LooSea was sent to reform school (Lakeside Collision) for a quoted 3 days of treatments.
I phoned Lakeside Collission after 3 days to confirm that I could pick-up my beloved Loosea. No. She’s not ready, should be ready tomorrow. We’ll call you when she’s ready.
Tomorrow came. No-one phoned. I called them. No, LooSea can’t come home, she’s not ready. They only call people when their car is ready to be released, has passed the quality assessements. They refused to give me an estimation of when she would be ready. They are going to hold her without any courtesy check-ins with me to help me plan my life without her. Apparantly replacing a Honda Civic wing and bumper will take at least 5 days…. maybe more… ..no-one dare say…
Their refusal, or inability, to estimate a work completion time and follow-up to let me know when, if, that time shifts has undermined my confidence in the company. What strategies do they use for mechanical troubleshooting if their strategy for customer-service troubleshooting is cut the customer out of the information loop?
Not a clever move. Literally.
The concrete pillar wont budge on it’s position. Inflexible. LooSea, softy that she is, crumpled under such rigidity. Right indicator light smashed to pretty reflective pieces. Bumper deformed and scratched. We snuck home together. Taking only left turns. Wendy House scars from the 6.8 Quake (28 Feb 2001) can be seen on the concrete floor of the first picture. The moral is, mother-earth cracks concrete, pretty reflective lightfixtures do not. The pillars of concrete should not be tangled with lightly. Or, look forward when you reverse-turn out of a tight parking slot. An obvious, yet potentially rather expenisve lesson learned. I will be taking the bus to work today….
This Excel bar chart told me that silver cars have superior braking-distances to brown cars when driving behind LooSea.
Who would have guessed?
Snoqualmie Pass!
LooSea is my faithful 1995 Honda Civic. LooSea and ‘chains’ braved “Interstate 90″ (I90) to Snoqualmie pass. For UK readers, imagine a 4 lane Motorway with virtually no other traffic! A double-sized hard-shoulder. Vehicles stop on this hard shoulder to ‘Chain-up’. This is not only legal, its good for safety! That’s what driving the I90 from Seattle to Snoqualmie pass at noon on a Saturday is like! It’s about 40mins drive from my home.
More of todays snow photo’s. Check-out the snow-wall at the edge of the snow-ploughed-road. I’ve never seen anything like it in England!
